A Father's Prayer
by Rosaria Marie
Summary: Roger Cavendish, the Sheriff of Nottingham, reflects on the childhood of his daughter, Celia, and the illness that nearly took her life. (An excerpt from a Robin Hood retelling series of novels-in-progress.)


**A Father's Prayer**

Cavendish remembered how tiny Celia had been as a baby, what a strange thing it had been to gaze up on such a weak, helpless creature that was intimately connected to him and yet that everyone predicted might soon die. And whatever his mother might have said about it being better to be done with little nuisance that would be a constant reminder to everyone of his inability to father a son…he did not want that. No, not really. He might have pitied himself over his luck at first, but she was still…his.

He had been made to hold her once for her christening, scheduled very shortly after her birth for fear of her death. She was a very well-behaved child, even then; she barely even cried when the cold water splashed her, just looked at him quietly, with eyes wide and untainted, and clutched at his fine clothing. He remembered being slightly huffy about the possibility of wrinkling his doublet, and how he had tried to pry her little hand off. Then he'd found himself marveling at how small it really was in his…and realizing how much he didn't want to have to see her die…

He remembered the first time she'd walked over a year later. It had taken her a while to get the hang of it, and she still fell down a lot, but kept getting back up, determined little Cavendish that she was, and for once he let himself smile just a little. And he went over and patted her on the head, just starting to grow soft red hair, and said, "Very good, Celia."

It wasn't much, but she beamed up at him and reached up spontaneously and wanted to be held. And then his eyes had glazed over, and he'd muttered something about being busy, and left her there like that, confused over the rejection. He even confused himself over it.

Then he remembered when she was 7, and all the predictions almost came true. She had always been a frail, sickly child, and she fell ill from seizures often enough. But this one was the worst he had seen. She would surely slip away like her mother, and he would have to look on, helpless to stop it. She would be gone soon enough, like the daylight in midwinter. In the past, this constant concern had caused him to express this concern harshly, almost as if the defect was somehow her fault, or at least a significant annoyance that would make it difficult for him to marry her off in a suitably lucrative alliance.

He played at it, the game of detachment from the little one who had inherited his eyes, but when he saw the seven-year-old in pain, in panic, something inside him burst, and he had shouted at the physician for saying nothing could be done, that nature had to take its course as she struggled to breathe. And he had been even more furious with God for what he thought was making a child suffer for her father's sins.

And he sat there by her bedside all that night, not willing to repeat what he had done when her mother was fading, leaving the room when the labor took a turn for the worst and not returning until she was gone because he had been afraid to see the face of death come to claim her. He felt almost a numb inability to confront or react to the loss of her, and struggled to shrug off the intermittent stabs of guilt over leaving her to face it alone. Even if their marriage had been a forced, struggled affair, only rarely rising to anything resembling intimacy, she might still have needed someone to be there other than servants in those final moments. And he had failed her.

But it was over and done now, and there would be no returning to it. This was different though. This was Celia. However distant from her he had been and continued to be, in pretense or reality, she was still…little Celia…

And so there he remained, stationary in her room, just listening to her labored breathing, until she told him weakly that he didn't have to stay, if he were busy…

"Do you want me to leave?" he'd asked, suddenly wondering if she had wanted him away after so many years of him pushing her away.

But she'd struggled to sit up, crying, "No…no, stay with me!"

And he thought his heart would break. And he made her lie back again, "like a good girl, that's it," and promised he'd stay.

And then she'd wanted to talk about heaven. It had always been a favorite topic of hers, and what it would be like and who would be there, and sometimes she'd have dreams about it, which she'd tell him, and they'd unnerve him something terrible. Heaven was just a euphemism for death, he decided, something to soothe sensitive minds who felt God inside them. He had no part with such pious musings, but he often found such talk even more disturbing than threats of hell. There was nothing so cringe-worthy to him as false hope, or of something which he subliminally knew, even if it did exist, he was unlikely to experience or appreciate even if given the chance, taking into consideration his own gourmet taste for the devious, the complex.

And Celia made heaven sound so simple, like dreaming of falling asleep in the inside of a flower, where the petals are very soft and sweet and that is God. And when the flower opens its a flood of warmth, like the sun over the meadow on a late summer's morning. It sounded very silly to him, pathetically childish…and of course, she was a child. But her almost crystalline confidence in the unseen almost unnerved him. She seemed to live between realms sometimes, like some angelic being who floated between himself and the spirit world without even knowing she was different. And it scared him.

He had no idea what he even thought a potential paradise would be like; he felt incapable of even the faintest understanding of it apart from her. He couldn't even answer what made him the happiest on earth. He thought it might be the pleasure he got out of outwitting people, like moving chess pieces on a board. But even he wasn't foolish enough to mistake that for true happiness people talked about. Perhaps the closest he could get to what he thought they meant, something more akin to peace or joy, was the Christmas night he'd spent with his pregnant wife, for it was the first time he ever felt safe to be seen naked by someone. Was that Eden then?

He sometimes wondered if anyone truly knew what anyone else was talking about, or they were locked in their own interior jail cells, altogether alone, trying to distract themselves from that horrifying fact that they were really and truly alone, in the fullness of life and the emptiness of death. But Celia didn't believe that; she seemed to think God had made just about everyone with the ability to get through to each other, because He was there in everyone. If the interiority of the mind was a jail cell, she was sure the Holy Dove was sitting on each inmate's shoulder, the whole time.

And so the little girl had talked to him of her heavenly dreams until he squirmed in his seat, and he told her she should save her breath, for she was too weak…and heaven was very, very far away, and she needn't worry about it for a long, long time. And then she'd wanted to take the Eucharist, like everyone did when they were dying. And he hushed her again, told her not to go on about it, for she was not prepared to receive.

"But my poor God…I want Him in me so we can comfort each other…"

"Now, then, you know you're too young for such things," he'd chided her.

He didn't even know which "things" he was talking about: communion or death. Or perhaps it was both. Or perhaps it was everything…dark-clad priests with pale faces and pale hosts, harbingers of the end, circling his ailing child like vultures. It made him nauseous even thinking about it, just like incense did, and people would give him dirty looks for choking on it in church often enough. He wanted to put it off the last rites as long as he could…

"Then…would you receive for me, papa?" she'd asked, undeterred.

"Really, my girl," he'd exhaled. "You wouldn't want God to have to put up with me more than he has to, hmmm? Already vex him enough at Triduum and Christmastide."

"I know He wouldn't be vexed," she'd assured him. "You couldn't be any worse than a tax-collector, could you?"

Her words had taken him aback and he'd cleared his throat. "One never knows, dear." Then he'd decided it prudent to change the subject. "Is there anything else you'd like me to do?"

She'd thought a moment, then hesitantly gestured to the bookshelf. "Would…would you read to me?"

Oh, she'd asked for that from him in the past, and he'd hardly ever said yes. Always too busy with this, that, or the other thing. But could he refuse her now?

So he'd read her fairy stories for hours. He wasn't very good at it, he imagined; he was used to silently speed-reading documents to finish up his work before nightfall lest it grow too dark and he was forced to carry on by candlelight. Even as a youth, his eyesight had never been pristine, despite how much his eyes looked like a bird of prey, and flickering shadows from a flickering flame never helped. It was yet another thing his father had taken him to task over, as if every hint of physical weakness were his own doing.

Lord Cavendish had always wanted a strapping, athletic son, more like Locksley's boy, and instead he'd gotten what he called a "milksop." Poor lungs, poor eyes, better at board games than anything requiring physical exertion, only able to make things like fencing "look good", graceful instead of clumsy, like he managed on the dance floor. In a real fight, with his life on the line, his father had predicted he'd likely get shredded like wheat. The young man couldn't completely argue that point, though he imagined fight-to-flight might just work wonders for him in a pinch.

But his mother had determined that her offspring would make do with what he had. "You're my son," she'd reminded him. "Use your cunning, your chess-player's mind, and you will checkmate them all, even your father."

And so, it seemed, he had. Even if they all snickered behind his back about his gourmet tastes and lack of enthusiasm for personal endangerment, they'd never say it to his face. He had simply grown too good at the back-handed, back-room game of politics, and no one wanted to run the risk of losing their assets when he cleared the chess board. So all his work at reading had its rhyme and reason, purpose and plot. He liked control, and he knew to gain it.

But he knew far too well from his own childhood what it felt like to lose control, even over his own body. He remembered once, when he had been ten, and his father kept berating him over his poor breathing during one of his seizures, he had really just wanted to die and get it over with. He didn't like it all when his lungs played nasty tricks on him, and he felt helpless. And he hated how his head had always felt all throbbing and hazy, and he was unable to even plan ahead.

Fortunately, as he'd gotten older, his breathing had improved, except some days when the Lady Marian made him hard-race her on horseback. If it winded him, he did his best to hide it, and usually succeeded fairly well, but a few times it showed. If she caught on, she'd be all over it with remorse and wanting to take care of him, unlike his mother's attitude, which seemed only to care in as much as his success in life reflected her own. But Marian would always be different; no matter how much they quarreled, she couldn't stop being kind.

"My God, you look like a ghost! I'm sorry, truly…here, let me help. You can lean on me; it's alright…just sit down and pace yourself. I really am sorry…"

Of course, he knew she was. And of course he knew she'd forget and wind up inaugurating another race sooner or later. It was too much her way of being friends, so he couldn't expect her to abandon such frolics altogether. Besides, it tended to make his intentionally hardened heart feel softer, even if his lungs ached.

But that night at Celia's bedside, he was aching for another reason. Watching her, knowing her lungs were playing tricks on her as they had on him in his youth, making every shallow breath a torturous process, was like hell. Then she'd gone into a coughing fit, a long one he thought might never end, and on instinct he'd scooped her up from the bed and held her tight against him.

Just then, his mother had appeared in the hallway outside the chamber, having been woken by the sound of the little girl half choking, half crying in panic into her father's shirt. The old woman always had a destructively keen sense of timing…

"Let the servants handle it and get to bed," she'd told him.

"Leave me alone," he'd rasped.

"It's not fitting for you to play at nursemaid…"

"I said…ALONE." He'd pulled his child even tighter against him, fighting against the tears burning in the corners of his eyes.

"And who's going to get her away from you when she's dead?"

He'd not said anything to that; it was too horrible to think upon, especially because he knew it was true…he could imagine himself clinging to her corpse, unwilling to let go of her, for his heart was spilling over and he felt he couldn't stop it.

After Lady Blanche had finally left, Celia's breathing went in and out for hours. He'd made a lot of promises to God, and mentally cursed Him all at the same time, not caring if he were struck dead. He just wanted to be heard for once, or he thought he would go crazy. He begged and bribed and bargained and swore, all silently, and likewise he felt he was crying in his heart, in sheer desperation, without letting a tear fall down his face.

My God…no, not mine, to be sure…You have never been mine, nor I Yours…but God, as only there is, if even there is…You must hear me! Must You torture me with Your absence? I cannot bear the quiet of myself unheard! I will blaspheme You, that is what I will do, so You will kill me and burn me in Your hell, and I will feel SOMETHING! O my God, my God, HEAR ME! You can rip my lungs open, break me down until there's nothing left of me. Will that not satisfy Your wrath against this wretched creation of yours? Do whatever you wish to me, but save her, for she's done You no wrong…

Celia managed one word, over and over again every so many minutes, just making sure he was still there: "Papa…papa…papa…" And he'd kept assuring her that he was, that he wouldn't leave her, and he just kept holding her till she finally managed to get to sleep. He'd kissed her hot forehead and tucked her back into bed, continuing to bathe her feverish face with a soaked cloth for the remainder of the night and into the next day.

When she woke up in the early afternoon, the fever had gone down some, and she was able to drink some broth the maidservant brought up. Then she started rambling to him about her dreams. He barely said anything, both because of how exhausted he was and how relieved he was to hear her voice again after hours of fearing she would never open her eyes again. But then she mentioned seeing her sister and brother, "the ones who died inside mama's belly", and it made him bolt upright. He imagined she'd heard about them from her grandmother, who was always ranting in one way or another about the past. But then…his mother would never have referred to the first one as a sister. She was still emphatic that the miscarriage as well as the stillbirth must have been male.

"They said all will be well, papa, it really will be," she insisted. "They told me to tell you that. So you mustn't be sad or afraid. You do believe me, don't you?"

He didn't know if he did or he didn't, but he found himself promising to buy her something special, just to make himself feel better, and he'd bought her a doll…it was very silly, for she was already getting too old for such things, but she looked as if she might cry from sheer joy when he gave it to her, and promised she'd treasure it forever and ever, even if she lived to 100.

He wondered sometimes if God had heard him after all, and wondered how he would be made to fulfill his side of the bargain would when all was said and done. But more than that, he wondered if he was being trailed, traced by a shadow he could not see, by something fluttering just behind him, on the wind, over his shoulder, and when he turned around, it was always gone. Was it death chasing him? Was it his absent God, hunting him down like a baying hound?

Sometimes he wished he could see whatever it was, but he imagined it had something to do with his lack of faith, and perhaps even more telling, his lack of integrity. Perhaps he was just one of the lukewarm souls spoken of in the Scriptures, doomed from his very conception to be spit out for lack of some decisive will or grounding gumption to live or die for something other than himself. He thought about it sometimes, then tried to put it out of his mind, for it made him too sick to his stomach, to the point of wanting to spit out the very thought of himself.

And now, some seven years after Celia's cure, he found himself sitting down in the dark confines of his dungeon, with his teenage daughter's head resting on his shoulder, musing over the grimness of his fate. Surely this was the punishment that had been averted then, the ax that had not fallen casting its shadow over them, father and daughter both. But even though he knew he deserved it, she was still untainted, undeserving of such an end…she always had been…

He wondered if he had the strength to face everything he might be made to pay now, for he had lost count of so many second changes, broken so many oaths, he could not hope for everything to be alright in the end, no matter how much Celia had assured him it would be so with beaming childlike confidence. It was his own mortal failings causing this now, he was sure, and he dared not face the God he fled nor ask for mercies he would surely misuse yet again.


End file.
